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Remembering Dad, 5 December 2013 by pearwood, literature
Literature
Remembering Dad, 5 December 2013
My words from the memorial service for my father, Lansing E. Tryon, on December 5, 2013.
________________
What do you say at the memorial service for someone you have deeply loved all your life when you know there are others who have very good reason for being glad to have him gone?
I was always thankful for the fine father I had. After I became an adult -- and a father -- in my own right, I told Dad that, often.
I only wish he had been as good a father to his daughters. As many or most of you already know, since Dad and Mom moved out to assisted living in Wisconsin, we all figured out that Dad had in the past sexually abused two of his d
So there was this guy. He and my dad were best friends for like twenty years. They went to high school together and didn’t drift apart like most high school friends do. He was at our house constantly, drinking beers, watching games, talking politics. I showed him my drawings. I only did that when I was comfortable with a person. And he told me I was a damn good artist and I sat there grinning like an idiot until my cheeks were sore. I started calling him uncle and he really liked that. Said it warmed his heart.
So this guy, he was a firefighter. He’d run into burning buildings that were about to collapse and pull people out. Ever
If I Could Send Post-It Notes Back in Time by QuirkyCuriousBex, literature
Literature
If I Could Send Post-It Notes Back in Time
i.
No matter how many times the world
says to “be yourself”
it will never accept you
when you are.
ii.
You’re on your own. Always.
iii.
Admit to yourself that you lie.
You don’t have to make it
a point of conversation with others
because most will not understand
nor love you regardless,
even though they do it too,
but admitting it to yourself
opens the door for growth and that
is very important.
iv.
There will be a boy who you find
sitting next to you in a library one day
and he’ll eventually ask you to do something.
Say no.
v.
The road to hell may be paved with good intentions
but remember
Why I Slammed My Door by QuirkyCuriousBex, literature
Literature
Why I Slammed My Door
When my parents came home
and told me my grandmother had passed on
I remember slamming my bedroom door
and sitting on my bed with my face
towards my window.
“Are you alright?” my dad asked
as he peaked in. I didn’t answer.
He said something about death—
I can’t recall what
but it was his way of comforting me
because he thought, as anyone would,
that I was in pain.
But the truth is, I wasn’t.
I slammed my door because it was
an acceptable reaction
and the only one I felt I could perform
with any sincerity—without the need
for mental urges: Once more, with feeling!
I kept my face turned so
no on
She Called Herself a Poet by SugarCoveredDreams, literature
Literature
She Called Herself a Poet
she spent years telling herself that her ribcage was a keyboard
and that her body was a twisted, deformed stick, eager to be broken
and staring herself down in the mirror, she would tell herself
you. are. hideous.
uglyuglyuglyuglydontlookatyourselfuglyuglyugly
she was falling in love just to fall out of it
and breaking her heart just to
experience the feeling of it falling apart
she devoted hours of each day
to convincing herself that
she walked to the wrong beat
and sang in the wrong key
and lived in a world overflowing with pain
she cut red lines across her wrists
drew crippled hearts across her walls
smeared blood across h
Sleeping With An Insomniac by EmaciatedandEpitaphs, literature
Literature
Sleeping With An Insomniac
It's not simple anymore. This can't be fixed with disjionted apologies or
feeble explanations. There is no marrow in the bones of our love.
He dreams only of skeletons; emaciated fantasies
seeking to swallow him whole.
He sleep-screams about vanity, mirrors refracting
caricatures of flesh.
I reassured him it was only a reflection, but he said
'No. It was a nightmare.'
Sleep-scavengers; insomnia ravaged mongrels. They dehydrate; rabid and molting.
Survival instincts churning paranoia through a weary mind.
Exhaustion has blushed bruises beneath these eyes. Sometimes I find
myself n
You don't need to understand me.
You don't need to bore into my eyes and look past my old, smudged lenses. Don't push your way through my murky irises of swampland hazel and throw yourself down the rabbit hole. There's no point it tip-toeing on my wire-thin nerves and crawling across blood vessels. Because once you reach my oh-so guarded brain, make your way around terrifying gun fire and through fields of barbed wire, dig your way around my mass of delusions, lies, and fog of medication; there's nothing.
At least, nothing you can understand. My brain is a jumble of computer codes and endless data, and I do not know the password. It's a jum
i.
folded in half, fingers down my throat, i try to grasp the intangible.
it lies somewhere inside my larynx, tangled between vocal cords and embedded in my esophagus -swallowed, with grief and need and something else that goes down bitter like bile.
it takes me a while to realize, but when i am somewhere between empty and half-full, that in those minutes nothing is tangible. i am letting loose more than my dinner, i am flushing away my past present future all in one flick of my wrist and turn of my fingers.in that moment, i am far from infinite, but rather nothing at all.
ii.
a boy fell in love with a girl four years ago, and now all he
The rose blossoms into a beautiful
contradiction, its petals an explosion
of twenty thousand rosy fairy fingers
reaching out to grasp sunlight.
Like a star, it's born from a supernova.
A burst of honey-golden anthers and
stigmas, alive for only a few days
before they bare the scent for their
Own funeral, petals falling to the
ground and curling closed; golden
star-bits fading to scruffy white
dwarves that blink out and fade
In the wind. Harsh, needle-sharp
thorns are all that remain among the
olive leaves, themselves nothing in
a universe that once held stars.